The War Tapes

Candid, profane look at Iraq war brings it all home

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Sgt. Stephen Pink chronicles the Iraq War with a video camera in The War Tapes.

Sgt. Stephen Pink chronicles the Iraq War with a video camera in The War Tapes.

Photo: Senart Films

Photo: Senart Films

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Sgt. Stephen Pink chronicles the Iraq War with a video camera in The War Tapes.

Sgt. Stephen Pink chronicles the Iraq War with a video camera in The War Tapes.

Photo: Senart Films

The War Tapes

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The War Tapes
is unlike any other war movie you've ever seen.

No matter what you think of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the film will disturb or startle or dismay you. Its viewpoint is neither right-wing nor left, neither pro-Bush nor anti-.

If you have to pin a label on it, affix a yellow ribbon, because this unusual soldier's-eye documentary supports our troops in the most empowering manner possible — by giving them a voice.

It's not always pretty: The words they speak are laced with profanity and cynicism about how the war's been run. But they're also full of pride in their service, of patriotism for their country and of murderous anger against the Iraqi insurgency. And they are restlessly self-aware. "I want to kill," writes one soldier, Sgt. Steve Pink, in a wartime journal. "I have a recurring epiphany: This is happening and will have a lasting impact on me, for the rest of my life."

Assembled from 900 hours of combat video and 200 hours of Stateside footage by director Deborah Scranton, The War Tapes focuses on three National Guardsmen from New England — Pink, Sgt. Zack Bazzi and Spc. Mike Moriarty — who volunteered to film their stints in Iraq starting in early 2004. (A previous documentary, Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace, showcased soldiers occupying Saddam Hussein's old digs.)

The resultant footage is as unpolished and gritty as you might expect, but it's also poetic and probing — more so, in its way, than much of the coverage by embedded mainstream journalists. As Pink says, turning his camera on a recalcitrant soldier, "I'm not the media! I'm not the media, damn it!"

Pink's observations are often morbid and always trenchant; of the three Guardsmen, he's the sharpest chronicler of war's emotional fallout. Bazzi, a Lebanese immigrant fluent in Arabic, is the battlefield philosopher, a gung-ho soldier who reads the Nation and bemoans the habits of war. Moriarty is its cuckold: He believes in Bush and supports the conflict, but he feels betrayed by its failures.

All three express frustration with their mission — to shepherd supply convoys carrying food, arms or feces along treacherous roads — and with the roles of contractors Halliburton/KBR, whom they see as profit-mongers endangering the welfare of soldiers. "The War for Cheese," one man calls it.

Scranton's film is packed with shockers, from the thud of mortars and the pop of gunfire to recurrent images of charred, bloodied corpses. But few revelations hit so hard as the cost of chow: KBR charges the government $28 per Styrofoam plate, one soldier gripes, or $56 if he grabs an extra one to cover his food.

The blackest of black humor prevails. Pink turns his camera on Iraqi civilians shilling their wares — giant knives, giant boxes of cigarettes, pornography. Bazzi mulls over the American hand signal for "Stop!" — hand up, palm out — which also happens to be the Iraqi hand signal for ''Hello!" An unaware American soldier might say hello, hello, hello, until he winds up saying it with the end of a gun.

In its closing scenes, The War Tapes visits the Guardsmen at home. They speak of their injuries, physical and otherwise. Loved ones say they're changed: They're embittered, closed off. What haunts these final moments is not some hard truth of the war these men just fought but the undeniable, complicated humanity of everyone who fights it.

At the start of his deployment, Moriarty says he wants to "be somebody's hero." But by the end, we understand that nothing's more heroic than his candor.